iiNet lawyers today sought to discredit the method by which Dallas Buyers Club LLC collected internet protocol (IP) addresses of those it claimed had downloaded and shared versions of its film of the same name. The internet service provider (ISP) is one of a handful resisting rights holder attempts to obtain customer details attached to IP addresses Dallas Buyers Club claimed were involved in copyright infringement.

MUMBAI: Tata Consultancy Services, Accenture and Oracle are in race to acquire around 90% stake in IT services provider Elitecore Technologies from global private equity fund Carlyle. The fund that invested Rs 50 crore in the company eight years ago is expected to make more than nine time returns with the company now being valued at Rs 500 crore, three people with knowledge of the deal said.

WeChat, China’s most popular chat app, announced today it has begun testing out banner ads and promoted app installs on its “article view” pages. WeChat tends to attract the foreign tech industry’s attention for its growing number of services, like taxi booking and mobile payments. But it’s also a popular destination for news reading. Publishers will often push out content daily through their official accounts, using WeChat’s own publishing platform or a third-party one.

Unless this is your first day on the internet, you’re probably aware that Japan is home to some of the most bizarre vending machines on the planet. Canned bread, “used” panties, and pretty much anything in between are just a few coins away. While there’s no lack of WTF in the world of Japanese vending machines, some of the quirky stuff is far from practical. NTT Communications, a division of Japanese telecommunications conglomerate NTT, may have introduced one of the most practical vending machines since the original cold drink dispenser: one that spits out prepaid SIM cards.

Penang, Malaysia, Apr 6, 2015 – (ACN Newswire) – Programme information is now available on the inaugural SEMICON Southeast Asia, which will run from 22-24 April at SPICE in Penang. The event, organised by SEMI, a global industry association, features an expanded programme and larger audience base focusing on Southeast Asia communities in the semiconductor and microelectronics sector. SEMI estimates spending of US$19 on semiconductor equipment and materials in the Southeast Asia region for 2015 and 2016.

Singapore’s Cyber Security Agency (CSA) has this week started work, after being announced late last year by the Prime Minister. PM Lee Hsien Loong said on November 24 that “we already have cyber security duties residing in Ministry of Home Affairs and the Infocomm Development Authority. But I do not think that they are as strong as we would like them to be. We need to reorganise them, to strengthen our system and our institutions.”

Southeast Asia’s largest telecommunications operator Singapore Telecommunications will acquire US-based cybersecurity firm Trustwave for US$810 million (A$1 billion) in an effort to expand itscloud-based services. Trustwave will continue to operate as a stand-alone business unit, Singtel said. Its headquarters will remain in Chicago. “It will leverage Singtel Group Enterprise’s assets and market presence to broaden its overall security portfolio and address the fast growing emerging security market opportunity in the Asia Pacific region,” Singtel said in a statement.

A year after China began tightening regulations around Bitcoin, the virtual currency is still thriving in the country, albeit on the fringes, according to its largest exchange. Bitcoin prices may have declined, but Chinese buyers are still trading the currency in high volumes with the help of BTC China, an exchange that witnessed the boom days back in 2013, only to see the bust following the Chinese government’s announcement, in December of that year, that banks would be banned from trading in bitcoin.

Thousands of Chinese websites will soon be marked unsafe by Google’s Chrome browser. Adam Langley, a Google security engineer, says, “On Friday, March 20th, we became aware of unauthorized digital certificates for several Google domains. The certificates were issued by an intermediate certificate authority apparently held by a company called MCS Holdings. This intermediate certificate was issued by CNNIC.”

Express Mobile, an information technology company in the U.S., has sued China’s Alibaba for patent infringement. According to Express Mobile, the company filed the patent infringement lawsuit against the Alibaba Group in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Marshall Division. In the statement, Express Mobile accused Alibaba for infringing its patent related to the development of platform independent websites. The involved patent record number is 6,546,397.

The report looks at how the Internet of Things is expected to radically transform the technologies in government, energy, transport and healthcare sectors. While much of the data in the report are references to other studies, the Blackett Review does a good job of pulling together information about the current state of IoT. The report also identifies many areas, particularly from the perspective of governments, that the technology is expected to affect.

The deals were signed this week as part of President Obama’s visit to India. The states of Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan signed the deal with the U.S. Trade and Development Agency on 25 January to develop Vishakhapatnam, Allahabad and Ajmer.

An initial commitment to develop a partnership was agreed in September last year during Prime Minister Modi’s state visit to the US, and this week’s partnership represents the culmination of negotiations.

Other countries are also vying to work closely with India on its smart cities projects. Singapore recently signed a deal to build one smart city, and has been lobbying for over a decade to assist Tamil Nadu but has been unsuccessful so far.

Westpac has experienced its second major systems outage since debuting its new online and mobile banking platform just over a year ago, after an overnight system upgrade downed online banking for most of Sunday. Scheduled maintenance on Westpac’s Live platform had been due to run from 11:00pm January 17th to 8:00am the following morning

Although China is currently seeing strong demand for cloud computing data centers, Taiwan-based Quanta Computer and Wiwynn, a server brand subsidiary of Wistron are not in a hurry to strive for related orders and will continue to devote their efforts to meeting demand from clients in Europe and North America

The New Zealand government is urging schools to get in early on their start of year admin, in an effort to avoid another round mispayments from the national teacher payroll system, Novopay. The Novopay failure – New Zealand’s answer to the Queensland Health payroll disaster – has been causing trouble for schools since the system first hit the rocks in September 2012.

It is expected that the cable repair vessel will approach the broken segment at 1am on January 15 and the cable will be fixed completely at 2pm on January 23. By that time Internet connection from Vietnam to other countries will be 100% restored. The AAG submarine cable was cut at 8:04 am on January 5, at a point about 117km from the landing station in Vung Tau.

TAIPEI–Taiwan-based Compal Electronics Inc. (仁寶電腦), the second largest contract notebook computer maker in the world, has forecast that its smartphone shipments for 2015 will double from a year earlier as part of its efforts to increase the percentage of non-notebook computer devices in its product portfolio.

The hackers said they gained access to Sony’s networks from inside Sony. In November, after the attack was made public, several journalists said they contacted the group that claimed responsibility, Guardians of Peace, or GOP.

"Sony left their doors unlocked, and it bit them," a GOP member known as "Lena" told CSO Magazine. "They don’t do physical security anymore.” "Physical security" is hackerspeak for things like doors, windows, keycards, and video cameras.

The hackers said sympathetic employees let them into the building. Lena told The Verge, "Sony doesn’t lock their doors, physically, so we worked with other staff with similar interests to get in.” We don’t know if these employees were knowingly helping hackers or tricked into helping.

The hackers reportedly stole a key password from someone in IT. US investigators told CNN the hackers stole the computer credentials of a system administrator, which gave them broad access to Sony’s computer systems.

Once on the network, they planted malware. Some security experts, and documents obtained by Ars Technica, say that this was a form of "wiper" malware. Generally, that refers to malware designed to destroy the data, although in this case they used malware to collect data, too. The malware used Microsoft Windows management and network file-sharing features to spread, shut down the network, and reboot computers, reports Ars Technica.

This so-called wiper was apparently a variant of the type that a group called DarkSeoul used on South Korean banks last year. The FBI confirmed that the Sony malware found resembled that used in the bank hack.

The malware found and stole other passwords. The GOP told Sony it had grabbed private files, computer source code files for software, and files that held passwords for Oracle and SQL databases, among other documents. With access to that, the GOP grabbed data on movie production schedules, emails, financial documents, and much more and published much of it.

Security expertssay this is where Sony was particularly weak. It could have used layers of security that would have prevented them from grabbing so much information even after breaking in. Many companies don’t want to spend money on extra security that would specially protect email servers, password files, databases. That’s a big lesson any company can learn. Use layers of security protection that can stop hackers after they break in.

The malware transmitted information back to other computers. The malware was communicating to computers elsewhere, including in Japan — possibly other computers on Sony’s network. Some of the malware was written in Korean, Ars Technica and others report.

Ignatius explained that many underwater tasks require humans to dive down to check on a situation. But with underwater wifi, “you can just deploy your sensor or a node, and they can communicate together and relay information without the human in the loop,” he said. “That’s perfect.”

Subnero is focusing on how this technology could be used in defence, securing coastal waters by deploying sensors. For example, a submarine recently infiltrated the coastal waters of Sweden, and the navy were unable to locate it. This technology would have helped to do so.

Also, underwater wifi could be used to expand the concept of smart cities, Ignatius believes. For example, agencies can monitor the effects of climate change and the erosion of a coastline. Further, sensors that can communicate underwater would be of use in areas which regularly experience flooding.

Other potential uses that FutureGov can think of include monitoring shipping, shoal waters and patterns, and water temperatures.

FutureGov が考える、その他の応用方法には、海運のモニタリングや、浅瀬のパターン、水温のチェックなども含まれる。

Some sensors already operate underwater, but can only connect with another receiver. This service allows for an interconnected network of sensors communicating with one another, and land-based systems.

The new iPhone 6 models didn’t get a simultaneous release in China this year, which has already created a lucrative grey market for Apple’s hit smartphones. China still doesn’t have an official release date, and some Apple fans are buying grey market units for up to RMB 30,000 (US$4,890), according to Techweb .

When the iPhone 5S and 5C launched last year, Apple for the first time simultaneously launched in China and the US. This time round, Apple has reneged on that game plan, instead opting for a staggered release. Some media reports point to China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) delaying the issue of the new iPhones’ network licenses, but this was never confirmed.

The cloud could save the government billions if only they were more open to cloud computing. An AT&T study found that the US Federal Government could save nearly $19 billion annually by adopting cloud technology.

The government has experimented with the cloud, but they’ve used primarily private clouds. The AT&T survey found that 44 percent of federal agencies think that their systems aren’t as cost effective as they could be because they’re avoiding the use of public and hybrid cloud technology.

When asked to self-grade themselves, most agencies say that the cloud isn’t a priority for them, and the majority of agencies give themselves a C-grade or below for their progress on adopting cloud technologies. The primary reason why agencies are reluctant to try the public cloud is security – 71 percent of the agencies cite this as their primary reason.

Chris Smith, AT&T Government Solutions Vice President-Technology, said that “While cloud is not appropriate for every agency, in every instance, there’s no question it can deliver compelling efficiencies for many, if not most, applications and we’re seeing increased appetite from government customers for cloud conversion strategies – especially around community cloud solutions, which, for many agencies, represent an appealing mix of the cost, security, and feature choices that exist around cloud.”